Earls Court is not exactly North Kensington but the memories of a former resident of Portland Road are too good not to include. If you were into Folk Music at that time, the names will all be familiar to you. Please add a comment if you have memories of either the Troubadour or of Portland Road at that time.
The Troubadour, as recalled by Jenny Barton
The Troubadour in Brompton Road, Earls Court had been founded by Michael and Sheila Van Bloemen in 1954 and became a prime venue for musicians from the British Folk Revival.
In late February 1958, Shirley Collins was running Wednesday night and an American, Sandy Paton had the Saturday night. Then Sandy went back to the States and Shirley took over Saturday. At the end of the summer Shirley went off to America to do a collecting trip with Alan Lomax. So Mike Van Bloeman asked me to organise Saturday nights. He said he was getting sick of finding singers who would run the evening and how about it if I found a singer and instead of Mike paying them seven and six and a plate of spaghetti, I would take some money on the door and pay them? At this stage we were a small club with a small audience. Robin Hall and others dropped in now and again. I remember him bringing Martin Carthy along just before Christmas.That was a great night.
We had a bit of a thin time at first as I hadn’t enough money to get really good singers and then in the summer of 1959 Jack Elliot (Rambling Jack) came over and said to Mike Van Bloeman who owned the lease, that he was looking for somewhere to sing for two or three months. Mike said to me “How about it if we have Jack here?” Wonderful! That saved me from having to look for people. We didn’t have much of an audience when he started but by the time he left we were packed. He was there every Saturday night and he played the same material every bloody time, but the audience simply loved it. His wife sat in the audience keeping a beady eye on him.
When Jack went back to the States I got in touch with Martin again and other singers started to appear – Bob Davenport, the Liverpool Spinners, Shirley Collins was back, John Pearce, Frank Purslow, Jimmie Macgregor, Shirley Bland, Seamus Ennis at least once. By 1961 I had added Enoch Kent, Alex Campbell, the Thameside Four, Louis Killen, Cyril Tawney and the Ian Campbell Group. By 1962 we were booking the odd trad singer – the McPeake Family, Jeanie Robertson, Belle and Alex Stewart, Rory McEwan and the odd American such as Carolyn Hester and Dick Farina.
Pete Seeger was in political trouble in the States and he came over for a visit. To raise funds for him, twenty clubs booked the Albert Hall and put him on. We didn’t sell out but we did make a sizeable contribution. Afterwards he worked his way round all the clubs in turn doing a thank-you appearance. When he came to the Troubadour we crammed in about 130, God knows how we did it. I remember feeling rather disappointed that he sounded just like he did on record! It wasn’t like a live performance.
Photo of the Troubadour above is by Alison Chapman McLean.
The basement room was probably no more than 16′ by 16′ and it had an area at the back where the coffee machine and other people would be. We started at 10 and if you got there by 8 you might get a seat. We didn’t have that many seats because they took up room. If you didn’t get there early enough for a seat you sat on the floor or on top of someone else or you didn’t sit at all. I’m sure it contravened every health and safety regulation going.
It ended when the singers were too tired to go on. Towards the end we were stopping at about 2 or 3 am but in the early days some of us were kipping on the floor and going home at 6 am!
Martin Carthy
In theory we didn’t have a resident but in actual fact Martin was usually there because he’d come on from somewhere else or because he’d been booked which was a bit more frequent than other people because he was the best singer we had by miles, and the best at handling an audience. I was lucky to have Martin as a frequent and paid singer, often at very short notice. He helped me out of many and various holes, and as an unpaid singer when he just turned up. He acted as a magnet to other singers and musicians and his cheerfulness was infectious. He was a godsend to a club organiser.
By the end of the night Diz Disley would show up and he would always do a bit of an instrumental if there was someone to do it with. He’d do one of his monologues and the audience knew every word of it and absolutely loved it. Diz, Martin and Swarb (Dave Swarbrick) were a terrific impromptu threesome.
Only the people we booked were paid. We had some very reliable floor singers – Gerry Tobia comes to mind. We had a way-out group called the Southampton Balladeers, Ray and Archie Fisher the odd time, Dave Brady quite often, the Watersons once or twice in their early days, Nigel Denver, Paul McNeill and Isobel Sutherland.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan turned up with his manager Grossman. At the end of the evening my younger sister, who I was desperately trying to keep an eye on, disappeared on the arm of that toad Grossman. No taste that girl, absolutely none. Dylan was all right as a singer but he didn’t like people talking when he sang and then talked non-stop when other people sang. And he locked himself into the loo to smoke pot so I had people dancing up and down in the corridors so you can imagine he wasn’t my favourite visitor – far from! I do know that some of the singers thought he was wonderful.
Drugs.
I spent a lot of time trying to keep drugs out of my night. We didn’t get raided, unlike our chums, mostly because we had three keen folkie policemen in the audience. The deal was that we kept drugs out and they kept their chums out.
Last days
I finished at the Troubador at the beginning of October 1964. Martin Winsor and Redd Sullivan took over with Seamus Ewans in charge of bookings, paperwork and organising the door. I was expecting my first baby and the doctor told me I’d got to spend all day in bed. My husband said that’s it! I didn’t go to the Troubadour much after that, maybe just a couple of times later on. I was up to my ears with a child and a husband.
Meanwhile. while working at the Troubadour, Jenny had bought a house in what was then a very rundown Portland Road, near Clarendon Cross.
Moving to Portland Road
Portland Road 141-145, 1971. RBKC Local Studies
Back in 1959, I was living in a cramped bedsitter. I wondered if I would ever manage to find a house I could afford. My boyfriend thought he might have heard of one in Notting Hill. It proved to be a run-down slum, previously a brothel! My solicitor said it was pretty awful but added, if I was you I would buy it. It was £2,000 freehold, which I could just afford, on Portland Road, and probably due for slum clearance unless several of us could get half the road renovated.
There were three brothels opposite me and several families of totters with horses and carts – a perfect Steptoe district. Just down the road Mr Osborne would come home on a Saturday night somewhat worse for wear. His daughter-in-law waited at an upper window with a pail of cold water. When sufficiently sober she would let him in.
We had a few shops at Clarendon Cross There was the Welsh Dairy that offered to lend us their milk float to get home armchairs from Portobello Road but it proved easier to push the armchairs on their castors. There was a shop called Maureen’s where you could find tables for £2.50 to a fiver, chairs for ten shillings and even beds. But we could usually find discarded bed frames on bomb sites. With folded army blankets laid over the springs it was not a luxury. I offered such a bed to a friend from Glasgow, homeless. He laughed himself silly but accepted the offer. We were a nice, quiet working class area, bar the odd drunk weaving their way home. Mr Seall, our greengrocer, said he hadn’t heard language as ripe as that since he was in Egypt during the war. I spasmodically fed soup and bread to two poverty stricken art students. Now, fifty years later, Ian Logan makes all sorts of tin boxes for soap etc for stately homes and Harrods etc. He is still cheerful but no longer poverty stricken.
Portland Road 133-135 1971. RBKC Local Studies
Eventually, Julie’s opened as a bistro. Nightly peace was shattered. The green welly brigade don’t understand peace and quiet. My husband, the kids and myself put the house up for sale, got £20,000 a few days later and departed to rural Kent. The house was ancient and delightful, but the district not so. We now live peacefully in west Ulster and the new house is also delightful.
Jenny Barton, 2019.
North Kensington Histories 
Such wonderful memories. I was a frequent visitor to The Troubadour in the 60s. My memories are similar. I used to go out with Davy Burke who was a member of The Tinkers who performed at the Three Horseshoes in Hampstead. Alex Campbell was a regular performer there too. His trademark phrase was “Hell yeah!” They also used to sing at Bruce Dunnett’s club The Scots Hoose in Soho. Redd Sullivan was a bouncer for Curly del Monte at one of his “adult entertainment ” clubs in Soho and emigrated to New Zealand with him late 60s. Curly set up a folk club in Auckland called the Poles Apart but, because of his suspected other business interests, it was also known as the Legs Apart. I remember all the names you mentioned and, a couple of years ago, had the great pleasure of hearing Shirley Collins at Celtic Connections in Glasgow. Another performer who appeared at the Troubadour was Lou Killen who subsequently bravely became transgender as Louisa. I recall the first time Paul Simon visited London about 1964 and was guest artist at the Scots Hoose. After the gig we all went for a meal at a Chinese restaurant in Soho. Paul was very quiet and shy offstage and such a gentleman, pulling out the seats for the girls at the table.
My grandfather was Curly! If you have any more memories about him please could you get in touch? There’s a lot my mother doesn’t remember.
Fabulous memories.
What great memories of the Troubadour. I used to have a French boyfriend in the mid 60’s who worked in the restaurant next door and lived in the flat above. I also remember Portland road very well before it was gentrified and also the junk shops for second hand furniture.
Post war they couldn’t give the run down properties away.
The photograph in the Troubadour of Martin, Jeannie and Bob was taken by my wife, Alison Chapman McLean. Credits please.